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Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Mum and I went to ANWG in Victoria BC during the Canada 150 weekend. We got up early on Friday and headed down island to Victoria, a two and a half hour drive.

We only went to the Marketplace as none of the courses held any interest for us. We got there just as the doors opened and already there was a crush of people.

The booths were full of yarns sorted by type and colour. It was just amazing to see.

There was only one booth that had any weaving books, unfortunately we already had most of them.

I also took some photos of the guild booths that I liked. The first is from Eugene Oregon it was quite simple but very effective. Big samples from their Study Group, does the weave structure look familiar?! It’s Crackle!

I am not sure which group this one is from but it was definitely the most moving. The guild had lost a member and the booth was in remembrance of her, Dorothy Day. Using her dyeing materials and they dyed and wove a scarf inspired from colours of Daylilies. It was lovely.

The next booth is Seattle guild and they used large wooden plinths to drape their tapestries and scarves over to look like the Seattle skyline.

I think that this is the Boise Valley Guild and they made items from Bigelow tea bag string. Bigelow throws away a lot of the tea bag string that they can’t use and this guild was able to use it in their weaving. It was amazing. Every weaver that went by said “I wonder how I can get some”!

The Greater Vancouver Guild booth shows that simple can be really effective. They have tea towel butterflies flying around their booth.

The Salem Fiberarts Guild used a photograph of their natural environment to inspire their weaving creations. It was beautiful.

It was a lovely day, and it was nice to see old guild members from the Okanagan. The next ANWG is in Prince George in two years. Maybe see you there!

Sunday, July 2, 2017

While I had the Green Twill Boxes shawl on the loom, my friend Susan from Thrums came for a visit. She mentioned that she had woven the same pattern in the past and that she had amended the pattern and wove it as a continuous box. I'm a bit late in posting this as Susan's visit was in May! I loved the concept of re-using the same tie up, a similar threading and with just a few tweaks getting a completely new weave. Susan generously shared her original pattern and I made a few changes to come up with this pattern.

I redrafted the twill boxes and enlarged the centre part of the box. I increased the size of the borders and pulled a warp of 263 ends. This gives me an on loom width of 9 inches.

I love the hopefulness that I get at this stage of the weaving, all threaded, sleyed and ready to weave.I had the last of a cone of tencel purchased from Yarns Plus which is no longer available in Ruby Red; a true blue/red, and I was able to make the warp with just a wee bit left over.

I chose to weave the scarf using a colour called Adobe for the weft. Now that the scarf is done I will concede that it may not have been the perfect choice of colour. Here it is just off the loom, not yet washed.

My idea was to do a tone on tone red scarf so that the pattern was all about shimmer rather than contrast and I did get that result. The other result is that the scarf tends toward burgundy red rather than the lovely ruby red it was. The adobe colour really washed out the brightness I so loved in the warp.

Off the loom you can see the lovely shimmer that you can get by weaving tone on tone.

This is a shot taken today July 02 of my Himalayan honeysuckle (Leycesteria formosa) in full bloom. It is a beautiful shrub that has these lovely chain like flowers, the downside is there is no fragrance.